Must be a perfect day across the state. I envy you all. Just a year or so ago, I fished every chance I got. Now, I am fishing too little. I miss watching the hatches, chasing the risers, guessing the patterns, and tricking the trouts. Have any of you long-time fly anglers ever gone through a slump where "getting out" just wasn't as important as it once was? Is this the beginning of a more selective career or will the funk pass and the old enthusiasm be renewed? If you had to burst out of such a slump, how did you do it? Just do it?

Posted on: 2013/5/26 10:03

_________________ "Only nature is good, only the natural is human,..."

Here, however, we are experiencing the consequences of the doctrine, lately preached from all the rooftops, that the state is the highest goal of mankind....

I've had 3 or 4 prolonged slumps over a 35 year span of fly fishing. They simply do just come and go.

The onset of a slump can never be accurately predicted, and you'll have no more luck predicting the end of a slump.

My most recent slump was lifted by a prompt from a fellow board member to try some local smallmouth creeks. Longwader had been talking to me for a couple of years about places to try and finally I relented. I joined him in early May on a local stream. I hung some nice smallmouth and definitely felt re-energized and invigorated.

Since then I have been out fly fishing several other times, with mixed success, but I can at least say it seems interesting to me once again. I've spent a few nights tying flies too, which is something I had rarely done in the past few years.

Unfortunately, weather seems to play a bigger role nowadays too. It seems that in the past few years every Thursday evening brought a torrent of rain that ruined streams with high muddy water. Years ago I would have just driven 200 miles one way to find good water, but diesel fuel was 99 cents a gallon back then. Now I try to limit my excursions to times when conditions are most favorable, I'm not wasting $ 50.00 - $ 60.00 on gas on the if come.

Perhaps the biggest reason for slump periods, for me at least, is the lack of an inspirational fly fishing partner. My brother Terry was my main fishing bud and we fished 45 + weekends a year for over a decade.

He moved to CO in 1997 and as much as I don't like to say it, he took more than a little bit of me with him. My fishing interest went to less than zero when he departed. Fortunately I had some buddies that pestered me to fish so I found a way to muddle through.

Now I have a fiancee'/girlfriend, and for all intents and purposes other than the legal ones, "wife" that enjoys fishing. She enjoys it to the extent that I bought a boat and we spent weekends fishing local lakes for sunnies and crappies and the occasional bass or pickerel. It's not fly fishing, but it's still fishing.

In closing all I can tell you is to just let the slump take it's course. You'll have an "Aha!" day again and things will return to what you previously considered to be normal.

Take care dude,

Tim Murphy

Posted on: 2013/5/26 12:10

_________________
"Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel, and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land. Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken, then they wrote it all down as the progress of man."

Not fishing this weekend. Just too d@mn windy for me. Have been out enough to satisfy me so far this year but all too often it still seems like the weather didn't cooperate for me.

My "slumps" mostly come about due to the distance it takes to get to better trout waters. Sometimes it's just hard for make to make the commitment. Fortunately I "rediscovered" some nearby smallmouth fishing last summer/fall.

Posted on: 2013/5/26 13:01

_________________
"You might be a big fish, in a little pond. Doesn't mean you've won, cause a long may come, a bigger one."

Went through a similar stretch about 3 years ago. I so enjoyed preparing for a day on the water the night before only to find myself doing anything but fishing the next day. No apparent physical issue, I just wasn't doing the things that once brought my joy. It was driving me crazy. It was as though my backside could not escape the magnetic field on my favorite recliner.

After friends and family expressed concern about my health, I went to see my doctor. He told me I had low T (testosterone deficiency). Since getting on medication, my activity level is better and I feel 10 years younger.

Posted on: 2013/5/26 19:24

_________________
“If we become conceited through great success, some day the trout will take us down a peg. - Theodore Gordon

Jack,I'd fallen into a similar funk a few years back. The house, the job, the family, the whatever. I was fishing 4-5 days a year. It sucked! It was no way to spend my life. But a board member was putting together a mini JAM. I went. I met other board members, who invited me out on January 1st of all days. And the more I fished, the more I wanted to fish. Last year I fish more than I had in a long time. I've come to realize, one day they'll chuck my carcass into a hole and the work won't be done, but I will be. So today I might as well go fishing. Hope I see you there!

Posted on: 2013/5/27 9:52

_________________
Hatches come and go of their own accord, but work will wait for you to get back.

I have slumps where I can't find the time to fish. That's a little different, because I still WANT to fish, the rest of life just gets in the way.

But when it comes to emotional slumps, i.e. not caring to fish, a good brookie outing brings me out of it. The big stream thing gets kind of old hat. Predict hatch, go to stream, find hatch, catch fish. Rinse, repeat. It loses it's luster over time. They're just fish eating bugs! But deep green woods, a long hike, a small brook, perhaps a waterfall or two, agressive fish charging across a pool to smack a dry. There's something emotionally "raw" about it. At some point of the day you set yourself down on a rock somewhere, and it feels like that's exactly where you belong. It recharges my spirit.

Never experienced that Jack because I never have had the chance to grow tired of it. I, like pcray, have had times when I couldn't find the time to go, which I'm going through right now.

But for me, every time I'm out, I feel renewed. And I can't wait until the next time I can get out again. I guess it's because fishing is not just something that I do. It's more like something that I am.

Posted on: 2013/5/28 12:54

_________________
"I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the one thing I can think of that probably doesn't." --John Gierach

I feel your pain. This year I have been so busy with "life" stuff that fishing has fallen by the wayside. I just bought my license last week, missed the Jam and have yet to wet a line. I have even been absent from this board. Things look like they are changing for the better but you never can tell. The fish-i-tice is getting pretty bad.